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Kyle Froman: Human Constructions at the NYC Ballet

About two months ago, photographer and New York City Ballet corps member Kyle Froman (whose first collection of candid photographs, In the Wings, was published by Wiley last year) was asked to put together a 16-page photo booklet on the company. The collection, entitled "The True Foundation," will be released in coordination with the Ballet's Dancers' Emergency Fund gala performance (Dancers' Choice: Friday, June 27th at the New York State Theater). With a budget of zero, and the vast resources that are his fellow dancers and their beautiful theater, the photographer set to work designing shots that would sell the company in a bold and edgy way. "The dancers are young and sexy and the theater has so many different materials and colors. And I wanted the photos to really play on the idea that the dancers are indispensable to this company, because that's what the Dancers' Emergency Fund is all about," Froman explains. "I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool if somehow the theater was made out of dancers—if they were somehow melded into the architecture." Click "Continue Reading" for an exclusive preview of the collection."The True Foundation" Photographs by Kyle Froman

The underlying idea of the Dancers' Emergency Fund, which was instituted by Jerome Robbins in 1980 to provide financial resources for the dancers in situations of extraordinary need, is that New York City Ballet is its dancers. Froman underscores this idea in this picture by depicting the dancers as physically holding up the theater in which they rehearse and perform.

Froman highlights the designs and colors that pervade the New York State Theater through the creative placement of his fellow male dancers.

"When I shoot girls I always like to do girly things—to show their hair and their lips and their legs," Froman says of this photo, taken on the promenade of the New York State Theater.

"This shot took the longest because it's difficult to get all of the dancers in that position at the same moment," Froman says of this photo. When he did capture it, the dancers were so excited that they gave him a round of applause.

The promenade of the New York State Theater is plush with pieces of modern art. In this photo, the dancers become an extension of one of the sculptures.

"When I was planning the shots and looking for locations within the theater, I went all the way up to the fifth ring and looked down on the house seats. And I saw this sea of red and decided to place the ballerinas to look as if they were somehow floating down a river," Froman says of this photo.

Froman captures the contrast between movement and static images as the men cling to the lights like gargoyles and the women bourrée forward in the wings of the stage.

"In all of these photos, I wanted to depict the dancers' energy pervading every corner of the theater—the stage, the wings, the corridors, the promenade," Froman says. In this photo, taken on the stage, he used a slow shutter speed to capture this feeling.